Content vs. Context

by Carlos Menezes

We’ve heard it said time and again that content is still king, and with the sheer amount of information available on the Internet a content management system is essential in dealing with what would otherwise be an overwhelming task of keeping up to date.

With Rob being something of an RSS evangelist I found myself setup with dozens of feeds within a day of being at Quirk. This number has since continued to grow and the amount of time and attention my feed-reader gets is bordering on being decidedly unhealthy.

The fact is that I wouldn’t have a chance of covering a fraction of the reading material that I now get through were it not for my RSS. It’s a tool that I can’t see anyone who’s serious on keeping up to date on trends getting by without (be their focus of business online or off).

Including an RSS button on a blog is generally accepted as keeping Web2.0 savvy. That being said I do believe that there are some cases in which RSS functionality would actually detract from a blog due to taking the content out of its context.

They are as follows:

•    If a blog relies heavily on advertising.
None of the feed-readers that I’m familiar with display advertising. For blogs that provide their owners with significant streams of revenue this could prove to be an unacceptable drawback. As an aside I seen that the New York Times has made all of its content available for free - maybe an indication of how successful its online advertising is being.

•    If a blog is reliant on its design or layout.
Many bloggers design their sites to emphasise the content that they publish on them. Contextual artwork or the tone of the writing just won’t have the same impact when viewed within Google Reader’s exciting layout. Similarly, blogs that need to be displayed at a certain width will also suffer at the hands of a generic content manager.

•    If a blog has a high number of comments.
True, most readers do have a “view comments” link but for whatever reason I find myself never clicking on them. One can let comments be displayed on an RSS feed underneath the post itself, but personally I just find that this stops me from scrolling down to read previous posts.

•    If a blog just feels right.
Now I may be an exception here, but there are a few blogs that I just refuse to add to my reader. There’s nothing particularly exciting about their design, but when I visit them I feel like I’m coming back to someplace familiar. Either that or I feel like I’m escaping my routine and just taking a step back away from the bombardment of every day life. Whether it be some cheesy WordPress skin that’s used by thousands of bloggers or some custom theme the furniture often makes the content sit more comfortably with the reader.

Now maybe none of these points as stand-alones are sufficient justification to omit an RSS button, but there are certainly some blogs that are better off without the functionality.

One way around this is by providing partial feeds, but as somebody once put it (sorry, but I can’t remember who to credit with this), “Partial feeds are like foreplay without the sex.” I won’t go too far into that debate as it’s a whole discussion unto itself.

An alternative is to publish a well thought out synopsis of the post via RSS (as opposed to the first few lines that we get with partial feeds).

Now this may require a bit more effort but with some clever copywriting this will push a blog’s content in a nicely packaged format right under readers’ noses without detracting from the content itself. It can build anticipation, heighten targeted readers’ attention and even stop wasting the time of readers not specifically targeted by the individual posts.

Content may indeed be king, but the context very often provides the throne.

2007/09/21 | permalink | comments (4) | trackbacks (0)

  Bookmark this on ... BlinkBits BlinkList Blogmarks Buddymarks CiteUlike Connotea del.icio.us Digg it FeedMarker feedmelinks Furl Give a Link Gravee igooi Lilisto Linkagogo Linkroll ma.gnolia Maple.nu Netvouz Onlywire RawSugar reddit Scuttle Shadows Simpy Sphinn Spurl tagtooga TalkDigger Wink Yahoo MyWeb